This Jay Marriotti article makes me sick to the stomach.....sick thinking about what could have been.
In '03, I said WTF when Angelo fucked around and traded our #4 for two busts (which I called at the time). Same thing in '05..
Thanks for the highest of highs and the lowest of lows Rex....as long as I'm breathing, I'll never get the 4th quarter of Super Bowl XLI out of my head
http://www.suntimes.com/sports/mariottiweb/574008,092507mariottiweb.article#
Rex: End of an error
September 25, 2007
BY JAY MARIOTTI Sun-Times Columnist
And so ends the Rex-periment, a mammoth failure that cost the Bears a Super Bowl championship and took entire years off the lives of their fans. Benching Rex Grossman was the only call Lovie Smith could make Tuesday, knowing his team is distracted and wounded and needs legitimate reasons to believe the quarterback can sustain success and reach the playoffs again.
If Lovie had drawled his dreaded, ridiculed refrain one more time - ''Rex is our quarterback'' - I'm not sure 9 million people wouldn't have gathered at Halas Hall in mass protest.
Brian Griese is no savior, but he won't throw six interceptions in three games and won't allow the offense to commit 11 turnovers in the same span. He has a chance of reclaiming the team's lost equilibrium and winning games, a necessity now that Tommie Harris is out for a while and a once-dominant defense has been weakened by several injuries. Whatever aura the Bears developed last season has eroded to mediocrity, a sense they are vulnerable and perhaps doomed to a losing season. At least Griese, who once won the NFL's passing title with a 102.9 rating, creates hope.
As opposed to Grossman, who had become a dope.
His demotion means that once again, the NFL's charter franchise has flopped in attempts to groom its first franchise quarterback. You can count Jim McMahon, but he failed to stay healthy. You can count Sid Luckman, but he wore a leather helmet in the stone ages. Continuing a particularly hideous line of recent stinkery that has included Cade McNown, Chad Hutchinson, Craig Krenzel and Jonathan Quinn, Rexy was given every opportunity to make it big despite his short stature and inability to think quickly and wisely on his feet. What was so maddening is that we saw enough Good Rex to believe, at one point, that the Bears finally had found a real QB. But Bad Rex reared his ugly head in Miami, then in San Diego, then in the second half against Kansas City, then in a Sunday night litmus test with Dallas and an emerging Tony Romo, against whom Grossman's struggles are juxtaposed.
All the while, we're left to wonder why Smith and Jerry Angelo were so damned patient with him. Actually, the operative word is stubborn, and it might take years for the franchise to recover. If a quarterback and running back define a football franchise, then Angelo has failed to define the Bears. For all his superb architectural work in building the defense, he also may be remembered for drafting two colossal busts - and worse, sticking by them to a fault - at the most important positions.
Want to be ill? In the 2003 draft, Angelo abandoned his No. 4 position in the first round and traded down in a two-pick parlay, using the 22nd selection on Grossman and the 14th on defensive end Michael Haynes, who faded away quickly. In the process, Angelo passed on a running back named Larry Johnson, who went 27th to Kansas City, and a QB project in Romo, who starred down the highway at Eastern Illinois and was signed by the Cowboys as an undrafted free agent.
I'll pause while you run to the sink.
Not finished with their skill-position buffoonery, the Bears reached for Cedric Benson with the fourth choice in the 2005 draft, a decision that required a $16.5 million guaranteed commitment to the running back and eventually led to a trade of the more reliable Thomas Jones. With the next pick, Tampa Bay took Cadillac Williams, who has been a better NFL back than Benson, and in the third round, San Francisco took Frank Gore, who has become one of the league's premier backs. The names of Shawne Merriman, DeMarcus Ware and Jason Campbell were among those also called after Benson, who plays and talks like he's in a daze. Sometimes, I think we're talking to a thoughtful young guy. And sometimes, I think we're talking to Ricky Williams, a friend of Benson's at the University of Texas.
I'll pause while you run to the sink again.
The biggest regret will be drafting Rex and ignoring Romo. While Halas Hall waited for Grossman through injuries and uneven performances, the Cowboys were grooming Romo as their future starter. Now, Romomania sweeps the NFL and will lead to a huge contract for the kid from Burlington, Wis. - about a 50-minute drive from Halas Hall. As for Rex, he'll likely be a free agent looking for work while the Bears again try to fill the black hole of their existence - will they EVER have a real quarterback? - in the City of Weak Shoulders.
''Rex is in a tough position,'' Romo said sympathetically the other night. ''He has such a great defense, and he's almost asked not to lose the game. It's a difficult way to play quaterback. The game is too fast to try to play it at average speed. I don't envy his position.''
But we in Chicago do envy Romo.
While asking what will happen first: the Cubs winning a World Series or the Bears finding a franchise quarterback. I'm guessing Cubs.
